Knife Wounds Do Tend to Bleed
by Esoteric24
Summary: Depressing little one-shot that I thought would make a sufficient introduction for myself in this fandom. Someone's been stabbed... Rated T because it's morbid and I'm paranoid.


**Author's Note: **

**Why, hello there, people of FanFiction. I'm Esoteric24, just in case you didn't read the author's name up at the top there. You can call me Eso if you want. This is my very first fanfic published here (or anywhere, actually), so I'd really appreciate it if you'd give it a look (or two, or preferably a review). It's very, very short, so it oughtn't to take long.**

**Perhaps a bit of introduction is in order: I wrote this thing while at writing camp over the summer (yeah, that's right, I am THAT much of a nerd) when our instructor informed us that we had to write a under-two-pages "tense" scene employing switches in PoV (that's why there are several weird switches in there. I do apologize. Feel free to ignore them completely). And, oh yeah, have your rough draft in an hour and be ready for workshopping the next day. So of course, me being me, I had no ideas and no time to think of any. So I went with the ol' fallback-stealing someone else's characters. Otherwise known as fanfiction. (I changed the names, too, but they're back for your viewing pleasure.) **

**So I figured that it would make a nice introduction for myself on here before I post my longer stuff, and, heck, I'm bored, so now I'm publishing it c:**

**WARNING: Sad. Involves imminent character death. Has been called (mostly by me) morbid. YOU HAVE BEEN CAUTIONED.**

**Disclaimer: I am most definitely NOT Scott Westerfeld, and I wouldn't be writing this if I was.**

Alek took a seat on the edge of the bed, his face averted and his shoulders high-he would've preferred to continue pacing. He reached for the hand of the bed's occupant, but stopped as his shifting weight caused her to wince.

"Sorry, Deryn," he said, immediately easing back but leaving his hand within her grasp. He tended to hurt the one he loved the most, he observed bitterly.

Deryn smiled, although it caused her barking aching head to throb like an agitated ember, and squeezed his hand. She noticed his well-disguised wince at her bone-crushing grip and loosened it, though the warmth of his palm comforted her. "Oi," she said weakly and then concentrated on breathing. The five-inch-long wound between her ribs throbbed with every movement, and she wondered briefly if it would be easier, less painless, to give up entirely and let peace claim her. "Can... can you leave now?" she asked tiredly-they had covered nearly everything she had wanted to get at already in their conversation, after all.

Alek met her gaze, his eyebrows furrowed into a frown. "You should stay awake," he warned. "Keep fighting it, Deryn."

"Since when have I given up that easily?" she replied, still playful and brave even now. Alek clutched at the bedframe, his knuckles whitening, at the thought that soon his Deryn might be gone.

Deryn's sharp eyes spotted the strain in his fingers, and she opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, her lungs spasmed again and again, shaking her slim frame with cough after cough and increasing her agony to the edge of blackness.

Afterward, she leaned back onto her pillow, which was no longer pristine white but damply splattered with the crimson of her drying blood, and concentrated on the rhythms of her heart and lungs, once so steady and automatic but now rebellious, like a poor wee beastie that had been whipped too many times.

Thankfully, Alek gave Deryn time to collect herself before she spoke again. "Of course I'll barking fight, _Dummkopf_. For you," she said, wishing she had enough breath left to kiss him but deciding, regretfully, that she probably didn't.

"Yes. You had better, or I'll-I'll kill you." Alek's face twitched in horror at his own statement, but he didn't try to take it back. He had a horrendous talent for saying exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time, he reflected, both now and before.

Deryn rasped a laugh. "You'll have to get in line, I reckon. Something else currently has priority on the whole killing bit."

"I didn't mean-well, maybe I did, but it won't be me who kills you if you give up," he said, and she would've laughed again, if it wouldn't've hurt so much, at his determination. He was acting like there was something he could do about her wound. Like there was anything barking _anyone_ could do.

She didn't want to die, or leave him, but she didn't have a choice, really. All she could hope for were a few more moments with this boy, despite her dying. She should live while she could.

"Let's not talk about that, alright?" she croaked.

"Indeed. It's just-" He paused, no doubt wracking his brain for something to say. Deryn wondered exactly how long her own brain would be around to rifle through. A little longer, sure: Dr. Barlow, who was far from a medical doctor but the closest thing to one in the isolated confidentiality of the embassy, had informed her, almost cheerfully, that she would most likely die of blood loss or, if she was _really_ lucky, blood in her punctured lung.

"How has your stay here been so far?" Alek asked, and for a squick Deryn wished that he wouldn't be so solemn all the time, acting like someone ten years older, but then she changed her mind. She liked Alek just fine the way he was, and he was changing for the better-or had been, anyway. Deryn honestly didn't know how he'd cope without her.

"What is this, a sodding hotel?" She glanced around the room, wondering what she could say.

Besides Deryn herself in the gloomily blanketed bed and Alek perched on its edge, there wasn't much to the room. The wooden floor was dark and splintery to the touch, and the pale winter sun cast filtered, slowly creeping shadows through the one partially curtained window. It seemed as if the resonate, pompous ticking of the carved grandfather clock-a reminder that this had been someone's bedroom before they rushed Deryn in here-was smugly proclaiming with every second how it would go on when Deryn's own ticker would stop. She found phantoms in the water stains and cracks of the plaster ceiling.

"Tell Dr. Barlow that I'm sorry for the stains, but knife wounds do tend to bleed a barking lot," Deryn said, and felt her eyes closing as she absorbed his pained smile. She wanted to stay awake, to soak in Alek's words and his presence a little longer, but sleep was swiftly claiming her from the inside, gnawing away at her consciousness.

He immediately picked up on her exhaustion-she looked pale and wan from blood loss, only making the livid bruising on her thin face and the blood matting her blond hair the more obvious, and dark circles underscored her normally glittering but now dull eyes. Despite the repeated warnings that if she fell asleep, she might not awaken again, he murmured, "Sleep. Heal. I'll... I'll stay."

He had clung to the hope, right after the German agent had stabbed her in the back, that she might still hold on and pull through like she had through so many other difficult situations, but now that hope was gone, trickling out of him faster than his own heart could've possibly pushed it.

Alek watched Deryn as her eyes closed and her bandaged side, already so dark, got redder and redder with each throbbing breath. The shadows slowly bathed the bed in darkness, their movements imperceptible but inevitable, and still he stayed, watching and waiting.

**Ahem.**

**I warned you.**

**I PROMISE I'LL KILL ALEK OFF LATER. I PROMISE. IT WAS JUST EASIER FOR DERYN BECAUSE I KNEW SHE'D BE ALL NOBLE ABOUT IT. (I also apologize for the excessive length of these A/Ns. I don't blame you if you skipped 'em.)**

**And now I'll give credit where credit is due: I heavily paraphrased one of my friend's lines for the title. Yup.**

**Before you ask, I have no idea where Bovril is. I think it's with Dr. Barlow to escape the emotional trauma of one of its people dying. (I was just too lazy to explain it to my sadly Leviathan-deprived classmates, pretty much.)**

**Anyway, I might turn this into a drabble/one-shot series later (because this fandom DEFINITELY does not have enough of those already. Yup.), but currently I'm working on something much, much longer. It's *slow clap for originality here* my version of the fourth book we all so desperately desire. Right now, I have 50,000 words and counting, and I'm about a third done. Hopefully the first chapter of that will be up in a week-ish, depending on how well this is received.**

**So, do me and my fanfictional aspirations a big, giant favor and REVIEW!**


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